The present application relates to a stereoscopic image displaying apparatus including a parallax barrier application apparatus which can change over the longitudinal direction, that is, a barrier line direction of a parallax barrier between two perpendicular directions of a display screen.
In recent years, various methods have been proposed for three-dimensional (3D) display.
As the background, television (TV) broadcasting compatible with 3D display has started, and also movie works for 3D display are increasing. For such TV broadcasts and movies, principally a method which uses polarized glasses is applied.
Meanwhile, for mobile applications, some portable telephone sets and notebook-type personal computers are ready for 3D display. In this instance, a method which uses a parallax barrier as a parallax applying section without using glasses is applied. In this method, the image displaying method is changed over between two-dimensional display and three-dimensional display using a liquid crystal display element. Therefore, also an ordinary two-dimensional image can be displayed. An apparatus which adopts the method described is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent No. 2857429 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 1).
In some display apparatus for mobile applications, a display image can rotate by 90 degrees. In this instance, it is desired to display an image by 3D display in both of a landscape mode or orientation in which the screen is viewed in a horizontally elongated state and a portrait mode or orientation in which the screen is viewed in a vertically elongated state. In this instance, the parallax barrier has to be formed in regard to both of the horizontal and vertical directions. A technique for implementing this is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-119634 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 2).
In order to configure a display apparatus to be ready for 3D display in both of the landscape mode and the portrait mode like the technique of Patent Document 2, transparent ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) electrodes for driving a liquid crystal layer of the parallax barrier in a layer thicknesswise direction are formed in stripes in accordance with the pixel pitch.